Monday, 17 August 2015

Music of the Abstract: Daddy Cool by Boney M.

If there is a music genre that
led to such divisive opinions about it, disco is up there. On one hand, an unbelievably
popular genre of music. On the other hand, how many other genres of music have
had a campaign against, such as when on July 12, 1979, at the Chicago baseball
stadium Comiskey Park, a D.J. called Steve Dahl blew up disco records in a
promotion that ended up with riots?. Like any other genre when it becomes very
popular and mainstream, disco became like what would happen to punk after and
progressive rock before, forced back into the underground or diverge into various
sub-genres. I confess though that, just listening to a disco compilation album,
you realise how good the music actually is. After growing up with Disco Stu
from The Simpsons as a child, it's
amazing for me to see even how mainstream disco songs could be very
experimental or very odd. Donna Summer'sI Feel Love managed to be proclaimed
the future of music by Brian Eno, and
the influence is still profound to this day. Also think of Rasputin by Boney M., the
story of the infamous Russian monk, who was tricked into drinking cyanide and
was shot multiple times before his assassins even managed to kill him, set to an
insanely danceable beat using balalaikas. It managed to get to number 2 in the
British charts and has a folk heavy metal cover version by Turisas. How many songs today would be so esoteric in their subject
matter and sound compared to the countless party tracks of now?

Boney M as a group has aspects that might surprise some. German
music producer Frank Farian put the
group together and also provided most of the vocals in the studio. Also the
original Love For Sale album cover
would've be eyebrow raising back in the seventies let alone now. Yet the music
is good and knowing how beloved it is, members of the group touring performing
the songs long after Boney M was
officially disbanded, makes how enjoyable of the songs greater. While a bit of
a left term for this article in terms of being very well known, a song like Daddy Cool really stands out for how
its constructed as music, very danceable indeed but also very unconventional
compared to a lot of pop music now. My interest in Boney M also has a filmic connection. One of my most beloved scenes
in any film I've seen, from one of my favourite films of the last decade, comes
from the incredible comedic-drama Tulpan
(2008), a film from Kazakhstan directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy, where the protagonist and his best friend drive through
the Kazakh desert at high speed singing and bopping along to Rivers of Babylon. If anything else,
that and the sets in the video above are appropriate for this site, giant
mushroom in the background of the video and all.

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"I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason." - Rubber (2010)

About Me

I am 28 years old and hail from England. For the last few years I have been a growing fan of cinema and have decided to take the next step into blogging about it and any other tangents that about the things I'm interested in I get onto.